In 1924, the White Flag League managed to connect to various social constituencies through its structure. However, three groups stood out as being the most significant: civilian employees of the Sudan government; army officers; and skilled and unskilled workers, small traders, and artisans. In an earlier chapter reference was made to Erickson's idea that one of the prerequisites for the formation of secret societies is mutual trust among prospective members. Thus, recruitment usually works through relatively tight and previously established networks: friends, neighbours, or colleagues. How these bonds were formed is explored in this and subsequent chapters. Here, I study the structure of colonial schools and the career paths of educated Sudanese: the way in which education shaped their lives as a whole, from the types of employment open to them after school; the city to which they were sent to work; the type of people they met and the networks developeḍ This chapter is closely connected to the one that follows, which focuses on the officers of the Egyptian Army, because civilians and officers followed the same curriculum until the end of primary school.

Education policy and its social and political consequences in the period starting from 1925 has been studied extensively, but the era in which people like ‘Alī ‘Abd al-Laṭīf and ‘Ubayd al-Ḥājj al-Amīn attended school – between 1905 and 1925 – has received far less attention. It is crucial to the events of 1924, however, in the light of the fact that colonial sources describe White Flag League members as ‘low’ government clerks, in contrast to their ‘smarter’ (Arab) superiors supposedly loyal to the governmenṭ However, there is scattered evidence here and there in the records of 1924 that the picture was more complex than that, such as a remark made by a colonial officer that ‘Blacks’ had risen to ‘unnaturally’ high positions through education.